We know Local Guides love discovering new places on Google Maps and helping others make better decisions. Many of you have also shared feedback about the program over the last year, and we’ve listened.

We rolled out new levels, new badges, and an update that rewards even more points for your contributions that help people most.

More ways to contribute and points that reflect your impact

Higher impact contributions, like being the first to add a place on the map or leaving a thoughtful review, earn more points. We’ve also added more ways to contribute. Local Guides can now earn points for rating places and checking facts on the map added by others.Points will be awarded to contributions you’ve already made, and will be updated with the new changes. You may have even changed levels.

Instant recognition

You’re now instantly recognized for your contributions. A “thank you” screen will display how many points you’ve earned for contributions like reviews and photos.

Reach new levels

Along with the updated points, come five new levels.That’s right, you can now reach up to level 10, a status we know many of you have been eager to attain.

With these new levels come fantastic new badges for levels 4 through 10. This allows you to update your badge with each milestone, and stand out as a top Local Guide. These badges will appear next to profile photos for Local Guides on Google Maps and across relevant Google channels.

For example, this means I, Traci, went from Level 5 with 3,294 points...

...to being Level 8 with 37,270 points:

New perk

In celebration of the launch, eligible Local Guides Level 4 to 10 can earn a 3-month Google Play Music subscription and 75% off a movie rental from Google Play Movies. There’s still time to level up before the August 31, 2017 deadline. Learn more.

Really amazing update, I love this. But hope you also think to more spams we can see by new ranking method. For example you should create automatic system to detect duplicates place adding by different users or one user in one area or even duplicates places by one user far apart. And also about other spams like adding same photo to many places. We'll also help you in this case about our areas to prevent from spams. Thanks

Really glad to hear of improvements to the points system and really rewarding and acknowledging all the effort put in for Answers, photos, edits etc. All these are really important activites that help to improve the overall map knowledge.

@SP31 No, it should not be related and the advice given in the discussion (to wait a few days before contacting a Google Moderator) you shared is best approach if you're certain your reviews do not violate policies.

@YumiSato I recommend waiting until this update is available to you to see your new points and level.

@MadanKPradhan Yes, that is correct and is outlined in the image in the post with each contribution listed out with their point value.

Great update @TraciC, but it will take some time to get adjusted to the changes, and a point for every answered question and every added photos , don't you think there will be a lot of spammers , i am not pointing out any thing, i liked the update but just in case thought there would be much more spammers who are behing points and not Quality contributions .